Azerbaijan's military continues to carry out operations to liberate territories occupied by Armenia, the country's Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
In a statement, the ministry said operations against Armenian forces continued throughout the night in Aghdara, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Hadrut, Jabrayil, Qubadli and Zangilan.
Armenian forces opened fire on the defense line of the Azerbaijani army with artillery rounds and mortars, the statement added.
The Azerbaijani army destroyed two T-72 tanks, four grad missile systems, one D-30 howitzer and five vehicles belonging to the Armenian forces, it also said.
According to the statement, several Armenian soldiers were neutralized in the operations, and the situation at the front was under the control of the Azerbaijani army.
A new cease-fire, the second since hostilities around Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh began on Sept. 27, was announced on Saturday and took effect at midnight, but Armenia immediately violated the truce by carrying out attacks against civilians.
It was reached between Baku and Yerevan after the Oct. 10 truce, meant to allow an exchange of prisoners and the recovery of bodies, and was breached hours later by Armenian missile attacks on Azerbaijan's city of Ganja.
Azerbaijani authorities said 60 civilians have been killed and 270 have been wounded since Sept. 27, but they haven’t revealed military losses.
The number of houses damaged in Armenian attacks has reached over 1,700, along with 90 residential buildings and 327 civil facilities, according to Azerbaijani officials.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
Fresh clashes erupted on Sept. 27, and Armenia has since continued its attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces, even violating humanitarian cease-fire agreements.
The OSCE Minsk Group – co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States – was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict but to no avail.
Turkey has supported Baku's right to self-defense and demanded a withdrawal of the occupying forces.
